So basically, if you want to hear from tech people, you must use Mastodon.

But according to Elon Musk, why would you do that? Tech people have nothing worth saying anyway. And he hopes they stay on Mastodon.

@fediversenews

Whether Elon Musk likes it or not, tech people have important things to say that a whole lot of other people want to read.

For example, here's Google employee @johnmu talking about search engine optimization.

https://mastodon.social/@johnmu/109879325577937391

This is actually something that a lot of publications might want to report on.

@fediversenews

Social networks are not always about how many people use them, but more specifically *who* uses them.

Twitter itself was never that popular compared to Facebook.

It always had an outsized influence on public culture due to who used it.

Well, now tech people and academics have migrated over to the Fediverse.

Which means that if you want to talk to tech people and academics, you have to figure out how to use it.

For many people, the Fediverse is becoming critical for work.

@fediversenews

In fact, the Fediverse is now so critical to the tech industry that GitHub rolled out support for Mastodon profiles this month.

That's not a small thing.

Again, if you want to talk to tech people, a Fediverse presence is paramount.

https://mastodon.social/@nova@hachyderm.io/109790532829442644

@fediversenews

Here's the thing about network effects.

If a culture has a strong enough pull, everything adjacent to that culture gets pulled within its orbit.

This is why Tracy Chou finds herself forced to use Mastodon -- despite wishing she could stay on Twitter.

For example, where tech people go, tech executives tend to follow.

Where tech executives go, other industry executives follow.

Where executives go, VCs and investors follow.

That's how network effects work.

@fediversenews

(A whole lot of people don't like the notion of money people hopping onto the Fediverse. But that's what happens when you build something so appealing to tech people: everyone adjacent gets pulled into it.

Thankfully, the Fediverse gives us freedom of association. We can quarantine the money people if that's what we want. Which is what has effectively been done to the crypto crowd.)

@fediversenews

Let's now talk about the migration of academics to the Fediverse.

That's going to have wide-reaching implications across social media.

If Twitter continues its trend for maximum outrage-driven "virality", and the Fediverse continues its trend for quality research -- where will people go to cite high quality research?

@fediversenews

Again, what's the network effect of academia migrating to the Fediverse?

* Public policy and think tanks will follow
* R&D departments will follow
* Students will follow

Everything in academia's orbit will be pulled into the Fediverse.

@fediversenews

As much as I hated Twitter's blue checks, I admit that they were damn effective for building reputation.

By Elon Musk making this a paid feature and phasing out "legacy Twitter Blue", he's killed the reputation of the blue check.

And that has an effect on the network effect because one thing academia is very concerned about is reputation.

Now that academia is using the Fediverse, it's entirely possible that academics will build tools for building reputation.

@fediversenews

The Fediverse will succeed because it attacks Big Social in an existential sense.

Sure, Meta and Twitter can copy Snapchat and Clubhouse and Telegram.

They can't copy the Fediverse's decentralized structure because that's an attack on Big Social's existence.

The reason Big Social exists is to control your social graph!

@fediversenews

It's interesting how Elon Musk reacts to this attack on Twitter's existence.

His response is, "Well, everyone migrating to the Fediverse has nothing worth saying, and I hope they stay there."

Pretty much, that's the only thing he can say because what's the alternative?

He can't integrate ActivityPub and federate Twitter with the Fediverse. That would destroy the reason he bought Twitter.

All his decisions over the past 3 months would be useless.

@fediversenews

@atomicpoet @fediversenews
Is the fediverse's mere existence really an attack? I can see how someone as self-absorbed as bird dude would interpret it as an attack because obviously it has to be all about himself.

I interpret the fediverse as a set of social media solutions bypassing Big Tech completely. Is being ignored/mocked from a different jurisdiction truly an attack? It's hardly aggression. But big tech's response to it has totally been aggressive.

Who's really attacking whom here?